Meerschaum Lined Pipes...

I have 1, and it's a pretty good smoker. I've had it maybe a year, and haven't had any problems yet.

I have a French made Meer lined, Canadian style and it smokes fine. Bowl is a bit small for my liking though.

My experience with this was with a meer-lined Falcom. I felt the meer added nothing and reduced the bowl capacity - so I scraped it out of the bowl. IMO, block meer is wonderful, whereas meer-lined is mostly a gimmick.

IMO, meer-lined pipes are marketed as the perfect pipe for beginners -- "No break-in required!" -- but are more of a compromised gimmick than a true solution. You don't get the great benefits of either a meerschaum (watching a carved pipe darken over time, experiencing a cooler/more neutral smoke -- because you're dealing with a lower-quality meerschaum wrapped tightly in briar) or a briar (creating a cake, tasting the impact of briar on tobacco).
I read recently -- maybe it was in Still Searching for Pipe Dreams or whatever that sequel is called -- about a pipesmoker who had the meer lining removed from such a pipe. The man who did the job had never been asked to do such a thing before and wasn't sure it would result in a smokeable pipe. But he did the job and the pipe turned out to be a much better smoke than it had been with the meerschaum lining intact.
I've owned one in my lifetime. It's long gone.
Bob

Never had one of those. Seems fragile to me if it's a lining.

I have six in total, three NOS, and three new manufacture. The NOS are still holding on very well considering they were all made in the 70's, and the new ones are already falling apart.. I still enjoy smoking them and will buy some more eventually...